Professionalism : Demands Yet To Be Attained

In 2011, football authorities decided to put in place a professional football league with a series of criteria to make the main actors; clubs, professional. Amongst these demands are that clubs should be independent enterprises, own their own training grounds, pay adequate and regular salaries to players and create youth football teams. Owing to the inability of the clubs to meet with these demands of professionalism, the government decided to provide subventions to the elite clubs during the first two years of the kick-off of the Professional League to reduce the financial cost. But these clubs continue to rely on the financial subvention with a majority yet to meet up with the criteria of professionalism.

Independent Enterprises
Few clubs in the country operate according to the standards of enterprises in the industrial sector of sports entertainment. They are expected to have a capital and run the clubs as businesses capable of generating profit that will help manage the club’s activities without whatsoever subvention coming from any angle. Having unwanted breaks due to lack of government subvention has been regular in the elite championship. Very few clubs can equally boast of a headquarter, adequate administrative staff, logo and get their annual financial statements audited. The process of selling out players is still bleak.

Infrastructure
Clubs are equally required to be at least owners of training grounds that will help them prepare for both national and international championships. This is yet to be a reality with a majority of the clubs in Cameroon still training in inappropriate fields that do not even belong to them. Coton Sport of Garoua is one of the few clubs with an appropriate stadium.

Payment Of Salaries
While footballers elsewhere earn colossal sums of money, in Cameroon, a majority of players in the local league are given chicken feed as salaries. Most at times, the salaries are not even regular or do not come at all. Due to the fact that...